The latest post-holiday polls are in for Iowa–the home of the first Republican Primary (actually Iowa employs a caucus attendee voting mechanism to select their convention delegates). Iowa is now a toss-up between Cruz and Trump in the Republican caucuses. Rubio and Carson duke it out for third. Sanders moves within striking distance of Hillary on the Democratic side. Behind the headline numbers, a deeper look into the polls reveals some interesting points. But first the top line numbers. Two new Republican caucus polls from Iowa have been released in the past 24 hours: The Public Policy Polling (PPP), and the highly respected Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll. They both show the Republican race very close, with PPP having Trump over Cruz 28 percent to 26 per cent, while the Iowa poll shows Cruz on top, 25 percent to 22 percent. Rubio is third in both polls–15 points behind Rubio. Carson is a point further back in fourth place in the Iowa poll and 5 points behind Rubio in the PPP poll. The other...

This past week’s polls show some serious Donald Trump slippage. A deeper look into the polls suggests that his problems go well beyond losing the lead to Dr. Ben Carson in Iowa and Wisconsin. In today’s post we will show why his campaign is in real trouble. For the Democrats events of the week suggest a big Hillary win. Now for the details. Polls, released Thursday and Friday, indicate that Dr. Ben Carson has surged ahead of Donald Trump in Iowa. Monday, the Monmouth poll showed that surge continues. A Wisconsin poll also shows Dr. Carson moving into the lead there. Trump’s spectacular, and unconventional campaign, until now, had resulted in him taking a sizable lead in both state and national polls. There were, however, clear warning signs that his campaign had hit a wall–at a polling level well below the majority needed for nomination. We’ll look into what these signs were, but first note the reasons so many political pundits had expected his campaign to implode. This will provide the background for the data...

Thursday, October 22. New State Polls from Iowa and Wisconsin: Carson overtakes Trump. Rubio moves up. Quinnipiac’s poll in Iowa and the Wisconsin Public Radio/Norbert poll in Wisconsin spell bad news for Trump, upswings for Carson and Rubio. First the bottom line data. Carson has pulled ahead of Trump in both Iowa and Wisconsin, by 28 percent to 20 percent and 20 percent to 18 percent respectively. Rubio has moved up in both polls, garnering 13 percent in Iowa and tying Trump for second place with 18 percent. More detailed analysis of the Iowa poll’s raw data is even more problematic for Trump’s campaign. For even though he leads Carson in terms of who can better handle the economy, taxes and illegal immigration, fully 30 percent of those polled chose Trump as a candidate that they definitely could not support for the Republican nomination. (Bush was second in this to-be-avoided negative category with 21%). Only 4 percent chose Carson. Women and social conservatives gave Carson a big boost. Respondents who identified...

Who “won”–by no means the most important bit of information to come out of the debate–is relatively easy to assess. What would a panel of unbiased debate judges say? Hillary clearly “won”. Sanders wasn’t particularly good in terms of going beyond the straight jacket that his reputation has created. Nonetheless, I don’t think he did anything to lose his core supporters–or to woo supporters away from Hillary. Those are the headlines. But the potential catch is in the details of the story. Those going into the debate as marginal candidates–Chafee, Webb and O’Malley–came out pretty much as marginal candidates. Should any drop out, they likely would be Chafee and Webb, who had very small niche support and did nothing, in my mind, to change that. O’Malley might stay in as the “loyal oppositions,” on the chance of gaining some of Hillary’s marginal support should the upcoming Benghazi hearings critically wound her. Could O’Malley otherwise pick up a few points in the polls? Possibly, as an alternative to the top...